


How to Preserve a House of Oak

by Tawabids



Series: The Abiding King [2]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Cultural Differences, Domestic Fluff, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Fluff and Angst, Frodo's Gay Uncles, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Internal Conflict, Lots of sleeping which is oddly appropriate for this series, M/M, Near-Death But for Bilbo Baggins and his remarkable luck, Shire AU, Teenage Drama, cuddling for warmth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-30
Packaged: 2018-02-22 23:59:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2526452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tawabids/pseuds/Tawabids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robbed of his youth and birthright, Thorin had travelled to the Shire hoping to live out his days in peace, as a happy self-exile in love with a graying hobbit. But one hot summer’s day he discovers that he has brought dangers of a dragonish nature under Bilbo’s roof. </p><p>Or: the short sequel to <i>King, Come at Red Morning</i>, in which Thorin the Sleeping Beauty of Erebor takes a short nap and nearly burns Bag End to the ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Afternoon is for Sleeping

**Author's Note:**

> AN: This fic follows directly on from my Sleeping Beauty AU, > _King, Come at Red Morning_. The story here is a relatively stand-alone domestic snippet, but on its own all you need to know is that in _King_ , Thorin spent the entire period between the fall of Erebor to the events of _The Hobbit_ in a comatose state under Smaug’s captivity. His body is his canonical age but his memories are roughly equivalent to a teenage human (his mental age is somewhere in between the two). 
> 
> For those who’ve come here from _King, Come at Red Morning_ , I apologise for this taking so much longer than I promised. It’s a bit of a self-indulgent piece in my opinion, my attempt to capture the post- _King_ atmosphere of Bilbo and Thorin’s lives without actually bothering to write another 130K on the subject. I hope you enjoy it anyway!

It was high summer, and an unusually hot one at that. 

A wind like a dragon's breath had rolled over the hills of the Shire that February. It baked the green fields into seed heads and dried the rivers until they shrunk down to their mudflats. The sheep hid under the shrinking trees and even the most devoted hobbits abandoned their gardens for the cool shade of verandas and backroom parlours. After four years in the Shire, Thorin had mostly adjusted to the temperate climate, but a day like this was unbearable. He was made for deep, cool caverns and snowy crags, windswept tundras and damp, frosty valleys. He tied his hair back onto a knot on the back of his head, stripped down to the lightest shirt he owned and gulped water from the artesian pump in the front yard of Bag End. But he was still too hot to do anything but sit on the porch with a book, shaded by the trellis roses, his face as pink as a squalling baby, sweat soaking his beard and pooling in the hollows of his neck. 

Frodo was staying with one of the Brandybuck families this week, as he often did when the weather was warm and he and his cousins could keep each other occupied. Bilbo returned from the market just after noon. He trudged through the front gate with his basket hanging from the tips of his fingers and a handkerchief tied around his neck to keep the sun off. He was almost as pink as Thorin, but Thorin thought it suited Bilbo much better. It looked almost attractive, if it wasn't far too hot to get interested in such things.

"You've hardly moved an inch," Bilbo chuckled as he passed Thorin to fill a bucket with fresh water from the pump. Thorin had sat down on the bench before Bilbo left for market that morning. "Haven't you finished that book yet?"

"I've read about three pages," Thorin grunted. "My thoughts keep wandering off."

"It's too hot to think," Bilbo agreed, pausing as he pushed open the front door to gasp at the cool air flowing out of Bag End. "I'm done for the day. I'm going to lie down and not move until the sun has the decency to sink for the night."

"I'll join you," Thorin said, sticking a rose leaf in his book and snapping it shut.

"Just so long as you don't touch me," Bilbo replied over his shoulder as he headed to the pantry to dump his basket. "It's too hot to touch anybody."

"No fear of that," Thorin grizzled. "Ugh, and Frodo's away and everything. What terrible timing."

"We've got the rest of the week," Bilbo pointed out. "Maybe it'll cool down a bit tomorrow."

In the bedroom Bilbo pulled the curtains and they collapsed on top of the covers on opposite sides of the bed. They faced each other but leaving as much space as possible between them, which wasn't much given the hobbit-size of the bed. Bilbo had left the doors open at either end of the house so thankfully there was a bit of a breeze coming through. Thorin had once thought of hobbit-holes as cramped, crude little halls, quaint in their details and the artistry of their wood-finishings but not much of an achievement. However, there was design in a hobbit's home that he had grown to appreciate over the years, and right now he appreciated it very much. With all the backrooms open, the cool air from these windowless chambers was drawn out through the doors to the outside, and its leaving pulled in fresh air from the afternoon that pooled in the deep rooms of Bag End, cooling down and renewing the cycle. It was quite unlike the many ways that dwarves ensured ventilation throughout their tunnels and palaces, but they were very different abodes with different needs.

Thorin was thinking about old maps of Erebor and Moria as he closed his eyes and began to doze. As his breathing slowed his thoughts sunk deeper into memories of black mines he had visited with his grandfather, the flicker of firelight catching in the veins of gold and silver that ran through the walls. A low rumbling seemed to reach his ears from far, far away, ebbing and flowing through the walls of living stone, and the flickering light grew stronger as he fell utterly into sleep.

 

\---

 

Bilbo's nose twitched as his mind oozed out of its nap. He wanted to keep sleeping, but something was bothering him. He breathed in deep, his back creaking. The hearth smelled odd, as if someone had spilled oil into the coals, the air sharp enough to make Bilbo cough.

The hearth. Bilbo shifted where he lay, rubbing his closed eyes. He had not lit the hearth in here since last week. It had been far too hot, day and night. And yet Bilbo's face was stinging and scoured as if he'd been sitting in front of the fire too long.

Bilbo's eyes flew open. Smoke danced in tall, thin streams mere inches from his nose, and flames were crackling in the heart of it. Fire! The bed was on fire!

He sat up with a gasp and wriggled backwards, tumbling off the mattress and hitting the rug with a series of thumps. The gasp had filled his throat with smoke and he rolled onto all fours, coughing until it felt as if his lungs must be bleeding, grabbing for the post of the bed to pull himself upright. His eyes were full of tears until he couldn't see more than blurred colours, though even a foot from the bed the smoke was little more than a faint haze in the air.

"Thorin!" Bilbo croaked, wiping his eyes until he could see. He was still woozy from sleep, his vision wavering as he shook his head to clear it. At last he managed to focus, and his hard-won breath turned to rocks in his chest at the terrible sight in front of him.

Thorin lay motionless on the bed with his clothes completely engulfed in fire. It licked across his limbs and shoulders, yellow as the light of a wax candle, dark streaks of smoke pouring off the tips of the flames. The blanket all around Thorin's body was a ring of black cinders, and the bed-curtains hanging from the post behind Thorin's back were already aflame. Thorin's eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted, his hand curled beside his face. Bilbo gave a low, strangled cry and ran for the armchair in the corner. A thick, wool blanket was folded across its cushions. Bilbo flung it open with a snap, sprinted back to the bed and threw the blanket over Thorin's body, leaning over the dwarf to wrap him up completely. 

Smoke streamed around the edges of the blanket. Thorin came awake with a jerk, nothing but an odd shape struggling against the smothering blanket, and Bilbo gave a sob of relief that he was breathing at all. The fire of his clothes felt searing hot even through the cover. The burning mattress beneath Thorin bit at Bilbo's knee. The burning curtains were inches from his face, and he had to turn his head away, unable to breathe for the vapors. His eye fell on the jug of water he'd filled from the well just before they fell asleep. He released Thorin long enough to reach across and grab the handle, bringing it up and flinging it over the burning curtains. His aim was good enough to extinguish most of the fire up there, and he pulled down the rest with his bare hands, crumpling the fabric up until the embers faded.

Thorin had got out of Bilbo's grip and his head appeared over the edge of the blanket. He was swearing in ragged _khuzdul_. "What the blazes is going on?"

"Blazes indeed – out! Get outside!" Bilbo grabbed him, wrapped the blanket tighter around him again and hauled him to his feet, pushing him towards the door. Thorin began to cough, stumbling and gripping the doorframe for a moment before he went on.

The bedclothes were still burning, more freely now without a dwarf and the wool blanket to constrict them. Where had the fire come from? What had been fueling it? Bilbo had to get it under control before the whole house went up. He grabbed the edge of the mattress and heaved it onto the floor, dragging it through the door behind Thorin. The smoke choked him, the flames spread closer and closer to his hands, his spine and knees protested as he crept backwards in a low crouch, dragging the mattress towards the door where Thorin was disappearing into the blinding sunshine. The journey seemed to take hours, but was probably less than a minute before Bilbo finally hauled the mattress out onto the lawn, dropped it and then flipped it over to smother the flames.

Thorin was hunched over on hands and knees, gasping for breath. Bilbo straightened up and tried to walk the five steps to reach him, and immediately swooned, just managing to catch himself before his head hit the grass. He coughed and gulped air until his head cleared, then crawled towards Thorin, who was still bent over with his head hanging low.

"Don't move," he croaked, his hand hovering over Thorin's shoulder. "Let me – let me see –"

He lifted the blanket away slowly. Great flakes of ash came with it, seared hanks of clothing and some powdered cinders that were almost white. Beneath them, the skin of Thorin's shoulder was black and peeling. Bilbo remembered a cousin who'd accidentally tipped a pot of soup over her arm as a child. He remembered the horrible pain she'd gone through, pus-soaked bandages, weeks of touch-and-go infection, and a lifetime of scars that constricted her fingers and made her hide her arm with a shawl at all times. Bilbo swore the worst curses Bofur had ever told him, tears pricking the corner of his smoke-wrecked eyes. 

“We need to get water," he whispered, half to himself, but how could he get enough water to soothe Thorin's whole body? The burns were everywhere – they were –

Bilbo realised he could still see hair standing up on Thorin's skin. That seemed odd. Hair would surely have been the first part to burn. Very, very gingerly, he brushed the exposed, black skin with the pad of his thumb. Thorin flinched, a ripple running through his muscles. But the blackness came away on Bilbo's finger, along with a sudden swell of heat that made him hiss in pain. Beneath the ash was a smear of clean, pink, hairy dwarf-skin. The peeling flakes weren't part of Thorin's flesh at all, merely residue from the burned clothes. 

"I'm alright," Thorin coughed at last. "Nothing hurts except a stubbed toe."

"It was only your clothes that burned," Bilbo said, tugging the blanket down further. He laid his hand on Thorin's arm. "I don't understand— _ARGH!_ "

"Bilbo!" Thorin twisted his head around, reaching out to him.

"Be careful! Your skin's hot as a stovetop!" Bilbo cried, hunching away and clutching his wrist. His palm was growing fiercely red, the sting rising in pitch until he could barely keep a squeak behind his teeth. 

Thorin looked down at his own hands and his mouth fell open. "Bilbo... the grass..."

He'd moved a few inches, and where he'd knelt, Bilbo's carefully tended lawn had wilted to brown, curling leaving, growing black in the centre of the patches where Thorin's hands and knees had pressed. He slowly raised his head to meet Bilbo's eyes. "What's happening to me?"

For a moment Bilbo felt like his head had turned into wood. What was happening? He had no idea. Had Thorin's skin absorbed the heat of the fire like a pan over the stove? Was this a dwarven talent? But he'd seen Thorin burn himself before, on the kettle or when he tried to eat hot soup before it had cooled. Why was his skin now protected? And then Bilbo noticed that the blanket he'd thrown over Thorin's shoulders to quench the flames was beginning to smoulder.

The fire hadn't done this to Thorin. The fire had come _from_ Thorin.

"Get that blanket off," Bilbo sprung to his feet, tucking his burned hand against his chest and snatching the blanket from Thorin. "Go to the pump, quickly, maybe we can cool you down."

Thorin staggered to his feet, hunched over, perhaps to hide his nakedness as his clothes were falling from him in fragile shreds, perhaps simply in some instinct to protect himself from attack. Bilbo wanted to touch his back to reassure him, and only a fresh throb of pain from his burned hand reminded him he did not dare. There was a square of varnished tiles around the pump, a rough mosaic of a rhododendron, which had been Belladonna's favourite flower. Thorin knelt on the tiles and Bilbo filled the bucket as quickly as he could with one hand. Thorin lifted it and tipped it straight over his head.

There was a mighty, furious hissing, and bubbling water turned grey-black as the ash rolled off Thorin's back and splashed across the painted rhododendron. Steam rose in great clouds as Bilbo filled a second bucket, and then a third, his arm aching, his chest stinging from the smoke he'd breathed, the blood pounding through his burned hand. Under the fifth bucket, Thorin shivered for the first time. There was almost no steam now except a faint mist that lifted in gentle whorls once the water had drained down onto the tiles. 

"I can feel the cold again," he said, looking over his shoulder.

Bilbo cautiously reached out and put his hand on the back of Thorin's neck. His skin was as hot as a sun-baked stone, far hotter than it should be, but it was no longer searing. Bilbo knelt down beside him on the wet, ash-stained tiles and pushed Thorin’s hair away from his face until he could see his dwarf's eyes clearly.

"Are you alright?"

"Are you?" Thorin countered, glancing down at the hand that Bilbo had slung close to his body. "I'm wet, naked and filthy, but I don't see what else I have to complain about."

"Thorin, you were…” Bilbo swallowed. “You caught fire in your sleep.”

Thorin stared at him. There was a wrinkle in his brow and a quirk in the corner of his mouth as if he was waiting for Bilbo to explain the joke. Bilbo saw the sag in his features and the blood drain from his face as he digested the events of the last few minutes and accepted what Bilbo has said.

“Come on,” Bilbo gripped his shoulder. His skin was still unnaturally warm, but not unbearably so. “Let’s get you inside before the neighbours see.”

Thorin’s shirt and trousers, well-worn but expensive cloth that Bilbo had bought for him over the years, had been obliterated. There was nothing left but faint bands of fragile charcoal around his wrists and ankles, where the hems had been thickly sown. Every crevice and wrinkle of Thorin's naked body was still dark with smeared ash. He looked like a wildman, but Bilbo was intensely glad that he was intact. He ran his hand down the slope of Thorin’s hair, untouched by the fire. His poor dwarf would have been distraught if anything had happened to his hair.

Thorin walked as if in a daze from too much sun. Bilbo still felt weak in the knees and could do little to help him. His head was thick and aching, his mouth tasted of smoke, and his heart was still pounding behind his ribs. He walked Thorin through the parlour to the kitchen and sat him down at the table while he made them a cup of tea. As he worked he held is burned hand to his chest, the fingers half curled, and neither of them spoke. The house stunk acridly of burned varnish and furnishings. While the kettle boiled, Bilbo went around opening the windows and curtains as wide as he could to air it out.

There were black, dwarf-wide footsteps burned into the rug in the back hall, and the faint shadow of fingers seared into the frame of the bedroom door. Bilbo stared at the marks for a long time. He felt nauseous and, for just a moment, more wracked with terror than he had in many years. Once he had faced spiders in the depths of dark forests, fled wolves across mountain slopes, and very nearly looked a dragon right in the eye. Once he had learned that death could snatch you up in an instant, no matter how you fought, no matter how you screamed, and you could not always run or hide or talk it away. But such things were not supposed to cross the borders of the Shire.

Bilbo closed his eyes and swallowed. There was soot everywhere, he told himself. He must start cleaning up before anyone came calling. And he should start with Thorin, who was likely getting his ashy hands all over Bilbo's clean kitchen at this very moment. In the bathroom, Bilbo lit the boiler above the bath and filled it up to the brim. 

He returned to find Thorin still sitting in the same place. He looked up at Bilbo. “May I have a blanket?”

“I’ll find you one,” Bilbo gulped. He pulled a clean, linen sheet out of the cupboard – his oldest and cheapest – flicked it open and laid it over Thorin’s shoulders. Thorin closed the sheet it over his chest, one fist balled in the cloth, and got up to fetch two mugs and the plate of leftover scones from that morning.

They sat down in front of their afternoon tea for a long time. At last Thorin said what Bilbo had been thinking and trying hopelessly to fight. “It must be because of the dragon.”

Bilbo dumped two heaped spoonfuls of sugar into his tea. His hands were beginning to shake. He could feel the come-down of the fear and panic draining the iron from his veins. He took a deep sip of his tea, though it was still too hot, really. He wrapped his injured hand around the mug before he remembered what he was doing and a fresh dose of pain flashed across his palm. He hissed and withdrew his arm, resting his hand on his lap. Thorin glanced at it with mirrored pain in his eyes.

"You should put water on that—”

Bilbo shrugged. "It's not that bad. And at least the whole thing seems to be over now,” he said brightly. 

For some time they sat at the table watching the swirls of steam rising from the stem of the teapot. At last, Bilbo spoke. 

“Why do you suppose it happened all of a sudden?”

Thorin shook his head and sipped at his tea. He licked his lower lip. “I was dreaming about him, I think. It felt like just a flash, but he was there, and then you woke me up.”

“You've dreamed about Smaug before," Bilbo pointed out, and did not miss the way Thorin flinched slightly as he said the name. He paused and then went on firmly. "What was it about this time? How did it make fire out of nothing?”

Thorin shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“The heat,” said Bilbo. “It must have been something about the summer heat.”

Thorin hunched down into the sheet and stared at his tea. He was a mess, dirty and clothed in linen, his hair hanging in dripping knots. But still it felt like an ordinary, domestic sight for him to be sitting at the table with a steaming mug. And that made it all much, much more frightening to Bilbo. If something had happened to cause this – if they'd been set upon by a wyrm flying out of the sky and Thorin had lit up like a firecracker and beaten it back, or if he'd caught some winter contagion and burst into a fiercer fever than any the doctor had ever seen, that would have been easier to think about. It would have made sense. But during an ordinary sleep on an ordinary day, his dear dwarf had almost burned their house down with Bilbo inside it. There must be an explanation, there must be a way to keep it from happening again. There simply must be.

As Bilbo sat fretting over the question, Thorin reached out for his tea and Bilbo noticed that his hand was shaking so badly that the liquid sloshed and slopped right over the edge of the cup. Thorin hissed as it splashed on his hand, but endeavoured to raise the mug to his lips. He sipped a little and winced, putting the cup down again quickly. "Ah, that's hot."

"Is it?" Bilbo leaned over the table and took a sip. "It's alright. Do you want some more milk in it?"

"Y-yes, p-please," Thorin said. His voice sounded slightly slurred as if he'd had too many ales. Bilbo stood up sharply and reached over the table to touch the side of his neck.

"Bless me, Thorin, you're freezing!" he cried, and hurried around the table. Thorin turned sluggishly to look at him. Bilbo grab his hand. His calloused palm was as icy cold as if he'd been sitting in a snowstorm with no shoes on. 

Bilbo was seized by a terrible panic. If Thorin could burn hot as a furnace one minute, then perhaps he would sink down as cold as ice the next. But surely even a tough dwarf could not survive such a state. Surely his heart would stop. After the impossible events they'd already gone through already today, it seemed not only probable, but the only likely option. 

"We must get you warm!" Bilbo gasped. "Wait here, drink the tea, oh dear, oh no…"

He ran for the linen closet again, this time grabbing a proper woolen blanket, and hurled it around Thorin’s shoulders, right over the sheet. Bilbo pulled him to his feet and he stumbled over the bench. Bilbo had to wrap his arms around his shoulders just to keep him upright. Bilbo’s burned hand hurt terribly, but he could not even spare the attention for it. 

“Come on,” he ordered. “Hold it together, old man, we’re going to get you warm again.”

 

\---

 

Thorin felt drowsy to the point of collapse. His skin was numb, his fingers too stiff to hold the blanket around his shoulders, his limbs shaking so hard he could barely make them walk. He felt as disorientated as if a pair of giant trolls were using him for a game of toss-stone. One moment the world had been smoke and Bilbo’s frightened face shouting at him, then the dousing water from the pump had knocked him half senseless. He had felt warmed, and yet the sun and thick summer air had not seemed to touch him. At last the cold, deep water from under the earth had sunk into his bones and clung there, eating his heat up faster and faster until he suddenly realised he could not think for the weight of it. He was going to die of a chill right here in the warm, sun-filled house that had been his home for four years. What was happening to him? How?

Bilbo’s voice had gone high and panicky, but his hand on Thorin’s arm was firm, and Thorin trusted him. He always trusted Bilbo, but in this case he had no choice, with his thoughts swimming and his heartbeat sluggish in his chest. 

Bilbo made him climb into the tall-sided, copper bathtub in the back room. The contact of the cold metal against the soles of his feet made him hiss, but in a moment Bilbo returned with old, ratty bath-blankets that he laid over the interior surface as swiftly as he made up their bed every morning. He made Thorin crouch down, still wrapped-up, and then disappeared again, returning with a bucket of coals from the parlour hearth which he tossed down onto the tiled recess beneath the bath. Within a few moments Thorin laid his hand against a gap between the blankets and could just feel the warmth of the coals beginning to permeate the floor of the copper tub.

Bilbo had made a third trip to and from the other room, this time with a large bucket of pump-water. “I’m sorry, dear, but I haven’t time to run the water until it’s perfect,” he said, and tipped the bucket into the tub. Thorin yelped as the cold sloshed around his ankles, and then Bilbo twisted a tap above the boiler and steaming water poured out to mix with the cold.

“It’s t-too hot,” Thorin stammered, rising to get out of the tub, but Bilbo insisted it wasn't as bad as he thought and made him sit down again. He fetched another bucket to balance out the temperature and refilled the boiler. He swiped his uninjured hand through the water to test it again, wetting his sleeve almost to his elbow as the water grew deeper. His shirt was already grey from the ash on Thorin’s body, foul as a week-old laundry tub, but Bilbo did not seem worried about staining it. Seeing him uncaring of propriety and cleanliness sent an aching throb of nostalgia into Thorin’s belly. It reminded him of the first months they’d spent together in the ruined Erebor and then on the long road to this home.

“Lie down,” Bilbo demanded, pressing on Thorin’s shoulders, and Thorin went down without a struggle, his knees rising out of the water as he flattened onto his back. The water was still not high enough to cover him, but it filled his ears and soaked his beard. Eddies tugged and sucked his hair at the roots.

He could feel the warmth, but it wasn’t enough. It felt like his body simply soaked it up and chilled it down. Soon Bilbo was emptying the boiler again with another bucket from the pump, and now the water was deep enough to fill Thorin’s mouth, but his head had enough buoyancy to keep him from drowning. He knew dimly that drowning was a bad idea, but somehow it didn’t bother him that much. He was too tired and cold to care.

He drifted in the water, and his thoughts leaked out and floated like oil on the surface, thin and almost invisible thoughts splitting and rejoining. He was aware of Bilbo filling the tub a third time, talking to Thorin and demanding answers. Thorin gave them soggily, not really sure whether he was getting the questions right or not. Bilbo seemed satisfied at least. The steam rose around him and blurred the world. Thorin’s vision had darkened at the edges, reduced to the circle of Bilbo’s face.

“Thorin?” Bilbo’s hands were on his temples, one thumb rubbing over Thorin’s eyebrow. “Stay awake, old man. Are you feeling any better at all?”

“A little,” Thorin said, and smiled at Bilbo. He’d bandaged his burned hand at some point during the filling of the bath, though Thorin wasn’t sure exactly when. There were wrinkles in the corners of Bilbo's eyes and around his mouth. Thorin did not think they had been there all those years ago when they’d first met. He liked them. They moved prettily when Bilbo smiled back at him, like the joins of finely-crafted armour sliding against each other. He did feel warmer, he realised at last. The chill was uncomfortable now rather than unbearable. “Still a bit cold.”

Bilbo sighed. He pulled off his silk vest and climbed over the edge of the tub, pointing his toes daintily as his feet slipped into the water. Always a hobbit at heart. In his trousers and shirt he sunk down into the bath beside Thorin, pushing his half-floating body against the side. With some splashing Bilbo lay down beside him, half on top of him, keeping his bandaged hand out of the water.

“What a bother it is,” he mumbled against Thorin’s collarbone. “This dragon business you’re stuck with. I really was afraid to see you taken ill so suddenly.”

“Ill,” Thorin echoed. “Catching fire is just like a bad sniffle now, is it?”

“For us, it seems so,” Bilbo replied, and kissed his beard, but Thorin felt the tea swirl in his belly. This couldn’t be ordinary now, could it? A daily concern, like the rain, and mice in the pantry?

After a while the warmth seeped into his blood at last. Bilbo wriggled around to the top of the bath and Thorin lay between his legs with his head on Bilbo’s belly. Bilbo soaped his hair and combed it out with his uninjured fingers, hanging his burned hand over the edge of the tub. Thorin supposed it made the hobbit feel better to think that the wash had been the purpose of the bath all along, and not anything more urgent. Not that his hair was likely to be much cleaner, with how much ash was in the water. 

The ashes of his Shire-made clothes, washed off to become nothing but grey cloud in the bath.

An ill omen.

“Why the cold?” Thorin asked, rumbling the question to the bathroom in general and not expecting an answer. “Hot is one thing. He—…” he stopped himself. He was not afraid of a name. “Smaug was heated from within. But cold-drakes are of a different race, I’d always been taught.”

“I don’t think it was supposed to happen,” Bilbo murmured into the crown of his head. “I think whatever the fever was, it was a fire meant for a dragon’s body, not a dwarf’s. It consumed you down to your core, perhaps, and the fabric of your body could not keep up with your blood's normal demand for heat once the fever was quelled. I think it just toppled you over like you’d run past the end of your strength.”

“You seem to have a lot of insight into dragons,” Thorin commented.

“Well, I’ve lived with a little one for four years now—” Bilbo started, and when Thorin tensed he wrapped his arms around Thorin’s shoulders, pulling his head against his chest in his embrace. “I’m sorry. That wasn't a funny joke. You’re not a dragon at all. And if you were, you’d know to control your heat and we wouldn’t have had such an odd day.”

The water began to get cold eventually, and the sun outside was growing orange as it sunk down to the hills. Bilbo got out and stripped off his wet clothes, left them dripping over the side of the bath and making the remains of the coals hiss in the recession beneath. He brought towels, and helped Thorin dry off while standing with his ankles in the cooling water – he was still shivering, but only bursts every few moments, and needed only a _little_ help getting a fresh set of clothes on. He was exhausted now, which lent some weight to Bilbo’s thoughts about the cause of the chill. He was also hungry, more hungry than he thought he had ever been in his life.

He tried to help Bilbo with the food, but Bilbo made him sit down. “Cooking will calm my poor heart. I need something to do with my hands,” he fussed, rushing back and forth from the pantry and stoking the hearth up again.

“I’ll tell you what you can do you with your hands,” Thorin muttered, resting his cheek on his knuckles just to keep from falling over if he fell asleep. His eyelids kept falling closed of their own accord while Bilbo was laying plate after plate of fresh food in front of him. Through the fog of the oncoming doze he heard Bilbo chuckle, and then for a moment he plunged down into black sleep. Despite his best attempts, his head fell forward on his neck and then snapped up again as he awoke with his heart racing and his hair all over his face. Fire! Had the fire returned?

Bilbo had not noticed anything. He was still humming an erratic ditty to himself as he cut up the rest of the morning’s bread.

“The sleep,” Thorin gasped. Bilbo glanced over.

“Hmm?”

Thorin rubbed his eyes. “The sleep, and the heat. It must have sent my mind back, it must have reminded me of my time with _him_.”

He looked up to find Bilbo staring at him with his brow furrowed and his mouth pursed, not in doubt but in a look of intense pity, in a way that Thorin would have considered a grave insult from anyone else. At last he let out a long sigh and brought the breadboard over to the table.

He laid his bandaged hand on Thorin’s arm and said, “Eat.”


	2. The Night is for Burning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for rejoining me for this little tangent into the Sleeping Beauty universe everyone! As always, feedback and queries are welcome.

They slept in Frodo’s room that night rather than make up a fresh bed in the spare room. The stinking furnishings in Bilbo’s bedroom would have made it uninhabitable even if there had been an intact mattress to lie on. Bilbo had been drifting in and out from only a few minutes, unable to lie still while his burned hand throbbed in jolts of pain, when he felt Thorin sit up slowly and swing his legs over the side of the bed. Bilbo reached out and fumbled until he felt Thorin’s sharp hip in the darkness.

Thorin rumbled, “What if it happens again?”

“It won’t happen again. Just lie down a little longer. You’ll sleep soon.”

“I’ll just be tossing and turning, keeping you awake.”

“I’d rather you slept than have to deal with your mood tomorrow,” Bilbo said, rather more tetchily than he meant to.

Thorin was silent for a moment, then he asked. “Suppose this time you don't wake up in time?” there was a shudder in his voice. “Do you know how long it takes a body to be overcome by smoke, before the fire can ever touch them, to fall senseless and choking and never rise again? I do. I watched dwarves die of it in the mountain. Scores of them, many only a few steps from safety. Fire has so many ways to kill.”

A few moments later he slipped out of reach and Bilbo heard the door open and close again.

 

\---

 

Frodo came home two days early. He’d had a quarrel with one of his cousins and run most of the way back to Bag End, despite the heat that was finally starting to wane beneath the coaxing of a western breeze over the hills. “What happened to your room?” he frowned almost as soon as he got in the door. He was short-tempered, because of his age and the fight and probably the weather as well. Bilbo was glad he had removed the rug with the footprints and rolled it up in a back closet, but the damage was still unmissable. 

“I left a candle burning and it fell onto the bed,” Bilbo explained. “It’s a bother, I know. I’ll have to order in a fresh down mattress.”

Frodo followed him around the next morning. “Why is Uncle Thorin sleeping outside?” he demanded. “Are you two having a spat?”

Thorin had stayed on the roof of Bag End every night since the fire, though more than once Bilbo had woken from dreams of snow-covered mountains and gone up to check on him only to find him missing. Wandering the roads by moonlight, Bilbo suspected, but didn’t ask. There was nothing Bilbo could think to do about it. 

Thorin had never been good at sleeping.

“No, we’re not having a spat,” he snapped at Frodo. “It’s too stuffy in that guest room. Thorin just prefers sleeping in the fresh air.”

“I don’t think he’s doing much sleeping,” Frodo corrected. “He said he’s been going down to the river at night.”

Bilbo didn’t reply. He hadn’t known that, and he wondered how Frodo had found out. He felt a little throb of gladness that Thorin was at least confiding in someone. 

“My parents slept in different rooms before they died,” Frodo informed him after a few moments. “They were terribly stiff with each other towards the end. You know what they say about the drowning, don’t you? They say she pushed Papa in.”

“Frodo!” Bilbo turned round abruptly and snarled at him. “By all that’s green, who’s been teaching you such stories?”

Frodo jumped and glowered at him. Defiant but still too young to do so wittily, he said only, “It’s my uncle who tells scary stories,” as he scarpered off.

 

\---

 

The heatwave broke a few days later and like a lid had been lifted from the pot, the boil that had weighed down the Shire collapsed. A cool wind rolled down from the north, shaking the trees and making the dry branches rattle like an all-clear alarm to raise the sleepy hobbits from their parlours and verandas. It brought the smell of rain, and the creeks began to rise again, though no rain yet fell on the parched Hobbiton roads – but in Bree they had a torrent and the streets turned back to their usual bogs.

Bilbo woke shivering in the windowless spare bedroom at the back of the house. He lay in the darkness for a while, thinking about his journey home all those years ago, sleeping on the hard earth tucked under a blanket with his warm dwarf. And now it seemed that Thorin’s closeness and warmth was abhorrent to himself. Bilbo understood, of course he did, but still he could not believe this clot in Thorin’s contentment (which could in the end only ever be their shared contentment) was insoluble.

He got up, fumbled in the dark for his dressing-gown, took a stub of candle from the drawer by his bed and put it in his pocket before he went out into the kitchen. It was barely lighter in there; there was no moon or stars through the invading clouds. He found a little glass-walled candle holder on the windowsill, lit the stub from the dying coals in the kitchen hearth and dripped a splash of wax into the glass to set it in place.

Outside, there was a definite chill to the air. The fresh, heartening scent of water and thunder was stronger now. The clouds were so thick that the darkness was impenetrable beyond the tiny sphere of light from the candle. The dry weather had to break soon. 

Bilbo went up onto the roof of Bag End and soon tripped over Thorin’s blanket, but Thorin himself was nowhere to be found. For a moment Bilbo stood looking around as if he might just be off relieving himself behind the oak tree and would reappear at any moment, but there was only the distant shadows of the hills, so close to imperceptible against the sky that they seemed to move when he shifted his gaze. He shook himself. No, Thorin was gone again, suffering his sleeplessness on his feet rather than lying on the grass with nothing but his thoughts to occupy him.

Perhaps Bilbo just wanted him to sleep so he’d be still as death, with the dragon keeping watch. Bilbo should have realised that day what dangerous company he was choosing to keep. Or perhaps that was why he’d chosen Thorin, a piece of his adventure to take home and coddle like a wild pet. 

He climbed back down to the yard and stood at his own gate for a while, though the clouds were still too thick to see anything beyond the ragged shape of the trees cut out against the sky. At last he went out onto the road, the dirt cold on the soles of his feet, following his nose.

He thought about what Frodo had said, and about what scents Thorin would follow in the dark, too proud to ever admit that he needed comfort and protection against it. Bilbo knew that even after four years in the Shire, Thorin had no great love for the green fields and sun-emblazoned gardens, nor the tunnels walled in packed earth and varnished wood. He craved mountains and metal the way hobbits seek riverbanks and spring bulbs. So down a little goat-path Bilbo went into the rattling trees and came out on the edge of the broad creek that drained into the Hobbiton lake.

There was a gully here lined by grey granite, that squeezed the creek into a thin, deep torrent. The edges of the boulders were lined with blankets of moss and scraggly grass that gave way to sheer plates and walls of bare rock. The water was swollen and brown with some fresh storm on the horizon, churning past below with a cargo of branches and detritus that the rain had swept out of the forest.

In the faint light of the candle, Bilbo made out a shadowed, hunched figure curled on a plane of flood-smoothed stone overlooking the river. Bilbo stopped on the grass just short of the bare stone. He knew not to walk on that stone, half from snippets of the old dwarven religion that he had collected from Thorin over their time together, and half from pure familiarity with Thorin and his ways, learned from four years of closeness and habituation to Thorin’s old world, the impression of which had remained on the dwarf like the shape of a sleeper left behind on an empty bed.

Bilbo listened to the rumble of Thorin’s voice, heard him kiss the bare stone and realised at last that he was praying. This the hobbit had never before witnessed, not once, not from Thorin nor any of the friends with whom Bilbo had travelled to the east. He’d not even glimpsed prayer among the older, traditionalist folk he’d encountered while he and Thorin lived with Dis, before Bilbo had returned to the Shire. He was aware of rituals and myths only from the occasional proverb or hymn which Thorin produced during their daily lives. He even remembered Dis and Thorin once laughing about grumpy, old fellows who prayed before meals or travelling. _"Silly old men. Do they really think anyone is listening?"_

Thorin was aware of Bilbo's presence. As he finished the prayer he rose and rested back on his heels, kneeling with his fists clenched on his thighs. He glanced at Bilbo through the curtain of his unbraided hair. “You should be in bed.”

“Are you _trying_ to get yourself a scolding?” Bilbo snorted.

“Maybe,” there was the flicker of a smile through Thorin’s beard. “I do enjoy making you go puffed-up and pink when you’re vexed.”

Bilbo huffed a chuckle and asked, “Can I come over?”

Thorin shook his head and pointed to the border made by the parched grass. “The bare stone is under blessing; it’s the rules that a non-dwarf cannot stand upon it. I don’t know what’s supposed to happen if you do, but…”

Bilbo nodded. It didn’t really matter to him what Thorin’s gods would do, but it mattered how it would injure Thorin if he broke the ritual.

“It’s going to rain,” Bilbo said softly, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Come back into the house when you’re done here. You’ll catch your death of cold.”

“When it’s safe,” Thorin replied, looking down at his hands again.

“Is staying out here kissing the rocks making you safer?” Bilbo felt his heart lurch, sending a wave of dizziness through his blood. “I’m not trying to malign your old ways, dearest, but what can this possibly achieve? Will the Maker of the stones pluck your memories of Smaug right out of you?”

Thorin hunched down over his knees and pressed his palms to the granite. “I’m trying to bring out the dwarf in my heart,” he croaked. “If I could only be all dwarf again…”

Bilbo swallowed, his hands wrapped tight around the warm glass, the faint, yellow light spilling between his fingers. He’d taken the bandages off his burned hand but the heat of the glass made the half-healed burns ache a little. “A wounded hobbit is no less of a hobbit,” he insisted. He crouched down and seated himself on the tail of his dressing gown. “How can any dwarf be less of a dwarf than any other?”

“But I am,” Thorin groaned, bending over even further and bowing his head until his hair hid his face and brushed the gritty stone, and the silver streaks in his mane glinted gold with reflected candlelight.

His voice bit into Bilbo’s heart until he was sure it would tear the chambers right open. For a moment he hated the dragon, hated all he had stolen from Thorin – his youth, his birthright, his place in the world, his surety of his own name. But Bilbo could not bring himself to hate what Smaug had given Thorin. Not because it hadn’t been wrong of him to do so or because it gave Bilbo any glee that Thorin should manifest strange sorcery and unearthly phenomenon without warning. Of course not.

It was because Bilbo could hate no part of Thorin. Not his pointless fretting over the fickle opinions of Bilbo’s friends and relatives. Not his occasional bickering with Frodo (having two young, untethered orphans living under one roof was not a recipe for serenity). Not his habit of wearing his boots inside and treading mud all over Bilbo’s carpets. Not even the possibility that he might burn down the house in his sleep. Bilbo couldn’t find space in his little, hobbit heart to hate any part of his dwarf. He wanted him exactly as he was.

“Thorin,” he said, standing up again and flicking grass off the edges of his dressing gown. “I can’t tell you how to get your dwarvishness back, but whatever you do, I’m certain it will be easier for the two of us than for you all alone.”

Thorin raised his head. His face was still veiled by his hair but between the strands Bilbo caught a glimpse of his blue gaze. After a long time he stood up, brushing his knuckles across the rock one last time before he stepped off the granite and into Bilbo’s arms. Bilbo had anticipated him and managed to put the candle down in the grass just before he was enveloped by warm, heavy, hairy dwarf. Thorin gave a little shiver, clutched him tighter, and Bilbo thought, _My dear old man, how I miss you when you go away like this; but you are worth the wait._

They went back to the house, Thorin with his arm around Bilbo’s shoulders, the candle in Bilbo’s hand just lasting until they reach the back room. Bilbo lay listening to Thorin’s breathing for a long time. At last he heard it slow and settle into the pattern of long-denied sleep, and could close his own eyes as well.

 

\---

 

Bilbo dreamed of a burning hillside. The smell of boiling pine-sap was in his mouth. The black clouds filled the horizon, the edges of the sky were red as flayed flesh, and the stench of burning greenwood made his eyes water and clawed the inside of his throat. His lips stung worst of all, peeling and burned.

Bilbo dreamed he sat on bare stone raised high up from a wide riverbed, like the granite that Thorin has put blessing upon. Almost a mile or so away across the river a hill clad in dark green and living grasses was on fire. At his back, far away, was a ridge of jagged black peaks that seemed to trap him between the fire and the mountains. 

He did not know this place. It was not the Shire. It was somewhere out in the wild world, far from home. In the dream, he knew in his heart that he would never go home again. His handkerchief was tied over his mouth and nose, stifling his breath as he pulled for air. He could feel the heat even from this great distance. He watched the branches of the trees turn black and collapse under their own weight. His burned lips hurt. 

Bilbo dreamed he was not alone. There was something with him, something ugly like an unnamed shadow moving in the corner of his eye, something he had met before in a dark and creeping place, long ago. He wished it would go away, leave him to his tears and grief, but he knew also that he needed it. There was a weight, on his chest and in his head as well, a weight of responsibility and of glimmering power. But his lips hurt so terribly, and the distant flames curled and blurred in his weeping eyes. He could not go on alone. It was too heavy.

Bilbo dreamed of a burning hillside, and knew that in this dream Thorin was gone. That was why the hill was burning. Because Thorin had begun to burn, and there had been nowhere to go, nowhere to escape among the dry pines. From his every touch sprang smoke and flames. Bilbo had run at his command, _run for the river, run for the bare rocks away on the horizon, you might make it, you will be safe._ But the river was too far for Thorin, so he had gone back up the hill, taking the budding forest fire with him. And afterwards – now – as Bilbo watched the fire spread, he knew what would come next. The cold. Confusion. Death. But the fire raged outwards from wherever Thorin lay dying, and Bilbo could never hope to reach him in time. He couldn't wait, couldn't wait for a day or a week until the fire burned itself out, couldn't seek Thorin's body among the ashes. He had to go on.

Bilbo dreamed that his world had burned away and left him alone. He knew now why his lips were seared and peeling. Because he had tied the handkerchief around his mouth to protect himself, and then he had kissed his burning dwarf goodbye. 

He must go on alone.

He awoke with a jerk and for a moment in the unbreachable darkness he did not know where he was. In a fluster of limbs he reached out and his hand hit the little bedside table, a dusty and rickety thing that was not really suitable for guests but had never been replaced. Something slid away from his fingertips and there was a bell-chime as it hit the floor. Still blind, Bilbo’s hand shot out and grabbed it before it could roll under the bed, felt the warm circle in his palm and a wave of relief. His old ring, from his adventure. He didn’t even remember putting it by the bed tonight. It made him feel a little stronger, just holding it. It had got him out of so many sticky situations.

Outside there was the distant patter of heavy rain. Bilbo felt the bed shift as Thorin rolled over and murmured some concern, not awake enough to enunciate in proper syllables. 

“Yes, just a bad dream,” Bilbo sat up in bed, carefully putting the ring back on the cabinet. He gave a shiver. He remembered in reverse order the burning hillside, losing Thorin in the smoke, a kiss pressed to a living furnace – he rubbed his hand across his eyes. A horrible dream of what might have come to pass on their way back from the east if Thorin’s condition had manifested all those years ago. But it was not so horrible now that he was awake and all was well. 

And… something else. There was some other lesson in the dream that he did not remember, some weight on his shoulders that he could no longer feel.

What he felt instead was that his muscles were buzzing full of insects. All of a sudden he feared the flow of time through his fingers, and turned to Thorin, fumbling for his hand and shoulder in the darkness. He found his face by guesswork, kissing him fiercely, mapping out beard and cheek until he reached his mouth. Thorin was sluggish but responsive, cupping one hand round Bilbo’s head and stroking the edge of his ear.

Bilbo tugged at the buttons of his own nightclothes and tossed them aside, swinging his leg over Thorin’s hips. He needed to set Thorin’s warm, ordinary skin aflame in the only way that was familiar to him.

 

\---

 

Bilbo stretched out and found the bed beside him cool and empty. He opened his eyes. The door was cracked open, and through it trickled the smell of toast, and Frodo’s giggling from down the hall. Bilbo lay for a while, his hand resting on the indent that Thorin had left in the sheets, before he rose and dressed himself.

He passed Frodo as the lad was heading back to the kitchen and found Thorin in the sunlit bedroom that still stunk of ash. He had Bilbo’s measuring tape and was stretching it between the posts of the mattress-less bed. There was a lot of soot on the posts, and varnish peeled away by the heat, but the wood beneath had barely begun to char before Bilbo had thrown the water-jug over it.

“You don’t have to build me a whole new bed, dearest,” Bilbo came up beside Thorin and slid and arm around his waist. “We’ll just need a new pallet.”

“No chance,” Thorin flashed him an easy smile. “Do I look like a carpenter? Slander. No, I have another plan in mind.”

“What’s that?” Bilbo drew back with a frown. “What mischief are you up to?”

“You’ll see,” Thorin lowered the tape measure and scribbled something down on a scrap of paper from his pocket. “I don’t know yet whether it will work.”

All three of them went into town that day. The grass was damp from the rain and the roads muddy, but between the grey residue of clouds came bursts of blue sky and warm sun. Flowers had already opened up along the edges of the bridge. The market was bustling for the first time in a fortnight, for the customers had finally come out of their cool hobbit-holes and were keen to stock up on both produce and gossip. 

As there always was, even after four years, the hobbits they passed occasionally stalled their conversations and turned their heads to stare up at Thorin. He no longer met their gazes, seeming not to notice them at all, but it still bothered Bilbo. He had not forgotten the first days after Thorin’s wakening, when the dwarves newly arrived at Erebor had gawked and whispered whenever Thorin entered the room. A cheeky young cousin of his had once suggested that Bilbo should be flattered to possess a creature that no one could take their eyes off, and Bilbo had come close to throwing him out of Bag End. Nobody deserved to be made a spectacle of, even for flattering reasons; and he wanted so badly for Thorin to feel that he belonged in the Shire. Maybe in many years time the stares would cease, or at least come only from small children, but for Bilbo it could not come soon enough. He was quite sure that despite the silver in Thorin’s hair and the full century and a half with which he outstripped Bilbo's years, he would still outlive the senior Baggins. On dark days Bilbo wondered what would be left for his dwarf then. Go back east in his old age, to die in the mountain where he'd been born? Among the children of his sister's children, with nary a familiar face among the crowds, and even fewer who shared his memories of the long-gone Erebor? No, better if he had friends in the Shire to hold him fast in his new life. At least Frodo would look after him once Bilbo was gone. But since Bilbo had returned from the east there was a troubling lack of friends who seemed genuinely fond of mad Bilbo Baggins (at least among Bilbo’s generation and older; the hobbits of Frodo’s age were much easier to sway with promises of good food and better stories), and fewer still who liked his odd, dwarvish companion.

His thoughts on the matter were interrupted as Frodo bounded up and tugged Bilbo’s sleeve. “There’s marzipan at the Noake’s stall, Uncle! Can I buy a little, please? ”

“Alright, alright,” Bilbo rummaged in his pocket and pressed a coin into Frodo’s hand. “Not more than you can eat, mind you!” he called after him as the lad raced off, but received no signal that Frodo minded.

“You spoil him,” Thorin said with chuckle, shielding his eyes against a break of sunlight through the clouds.

“I can spoil whoever I like. It’s my money, earned from honest burglary,” Bilbo raised an eyebrow at him.

Thorin glanced at him with a smirk. “Speaking of which, can I have five silvers?”

“Are you joking? What are you buying, a horse?”

Thorin held out his hand. He had brought some currency of his own out of the east, of course, but they had combined their finances soon after he arrived at Bag End and Bilbo now dealt with most of the day-to-day transactions. Thorin liked to do the sums on their expenses when he had a quiet evening, but Bilbo had a much better head for the management of a Shire estate and all its capital, as well as knowing the hobbit laws and customs inside and out. Now he sighed and shrugged as he took out the little he needed for the day and handed Thorin his purse. 

Thorin leaned down to whisper in his ear ,“I promise not to spend it all on sweets.” He slipped away into the crowd, overshadowing the hobbits around him.

When he was done at the market, Bilbo could not find either of them anywhere, and had to carry the shopping home all on his own (cursing the whole way; the rain and the last lingers of the heat had turned the day rather muggy). Frodo was home soon afterwards, but Thorin did not turn up until dinner-time. He smelled of sweat and coal-smoke, but his clothes were intact and he was smiling, so he had evidently not had another attack of dragon-fire.

“I’ve been down at the smithy’s,” he explained.

“And you’re still not going to tell me why?”

“I don’t know if it will work,” Thorin mumbled, just as he had while he was measuring the bedposts.

He was gone for two more days, by which time the rain had coaxed the green back into the fields and packed down the dust on the roads. On the third evening Thorin arrived carrying a canvas sack under his arm that clinked as he put it down on the kitchen table. Frodo at once reached across to open the bag, while Thorin just smiled and poured himself a cup of tea. But Bilbo was leaning on the doorway watching them both, and caught the nervous glance that Thorin shot his way.

What Frodo pulled out of the bag was a wide ring from which hung a number of thin, hollow tubes of burnished copper, each a few inches long and arranged in a circle. Radiating from the centre of the circle were a series of delicate, angled plates that curled downwards like a spiral staircase. Around the lowest plates were attached six thin, rectangular stems that swung freely.

“It’s a wind chime,” Frodo said, sounding a little disappointed; evidently he had hoped Thorin was bringing a sack-full of vicious dwarvish weapons to defend Bag End against brigands.

“In a way,” Thorin answered. He took the device from Frodo, hooked the chain over the wooden spoon Bilbo had left on the table and went to the hearth.

“Oh, no, don’t burn it! It’s lovely!” Bilbo cried. Thorin looked back at him, chuckling.

“This is what it’s made for, Bilbo,” he explained, and held the chime over the fire, which was still crackling merrily. For a moment, nothing happened, and then the spiral in the centre began to spin, red flames flashing across its facets, and the little stems rose up on their hinges as they whirled around faster and faster, striking the pipes as they went, which in turn clinked and rattled up their lengths. The chittering, rhythmless music echoed out of the hearth and filled the kitchen.

Frodo clapped his hands and laughed. “The heat is making it spin!”

“Yes,” Thorin held Bilbo’s gaze. “It’s a heat-chime. I based it off decorations from festivals in Erebor. There’s no wind inside a mountain, of course, but there are plenty of lamps.”

Bilbo’s eyes widened. He sat down at the table slowly, gripping the edge of the wood for support. “My clever dwarf,” he breathed. “You are too remarkable for words.”

 

\---

 

Thorin had made four of the heat-chimes, and a thin, metal lattice on which to suspend them over his side of the bed. They were poised over the length of his body when he lay down on the bare slats, rotating slowly and silently whenever he rolled over, shifting like the shining leaves of some low-hanging tree. Bilbo sat on the edge of the frame looking up at them with an unreadable expression on his face. At last he pulled a candle out of the lamp on the wall and knelt over Thorin, holding the flame about a foot below one of the chimes until it began to spin. Copper reflections flashed around the room. Within moments the jaunty, mindless music began, and Thorin saw Bilbo flinch.

"I'll never hear wind-chimes again without taking fright, I suppose," he laughed. Thorin suddenly felt a sharp burst of pain on the back of his hand, where it lay draped across his belly. He gave a hiss and sat up with a bolt. Bilbo looked over. "Are you alright?"

"You dripped a bit of wax on me," Thorin said, scratching the hardened droplet off his hand. There was a flushed, pink spot beneath. So he was not a heat-resistant dragon right now, it seemed. "Nothing too dire."

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Bilbo put the candle back where he'd found it and grabbed Thorin's hand to inspect it. His soft, dry fingers brushed over the fading burn. Thorin could see the veins sticking up in the back of Bilbo’s hand like blue rivers beneath his clean skin. He heard Bilbo sigh heavily. “I have a good feeling, you know. Lovely though your copper birds are, I don’t think the fire will be back.”

The young dwarf in Thorin, guileless and hopeful, wanted to believe him. And another part of him – an old piece of his heart that had lived two centuries without his ken, that knew the slither of wings and the smell of dragon’s breath, that could recite prayers in the secret languages of the dwarrows and taste coal in rock-dust – knew that he was wrong.

“Do you think we’ll ever really understand what happened?” Thorin rumbled. “Why the fire came on that summer’s day, or how to know when it’s returning?”

For a moment Bilbo swallowed, his thumb rubbing idly across Thorin’s knuckle. Then he said. “No. I don’t think so. But accidents will happen, I suppose. We must simply be prepared for them.”

Thorin nodded. He put his hand over Bilbo's and clenched it tight, pinning it between his own, even though the pain of the burn flared up from the pressure. At least now they knew a little more about what they were facing. At least there would be no more surprises.

He noticed as Bilbo leaned forward to kiss the back of his hand that he was wearing that strange, golden ring from the east on a chain around his neck. But then Bilbo shuffled forward to kiss his mouth instead, and he thought no more about it.

 

\---

 

The new mattress was delivered the next day, packed tight with fresh down and smelling of lavender that the craftsman had stuffed beneath the linen. It had cost a bundle, but Bilbo insisted he could not stand the back bedroom any longer; in fact, he should have the whole room refurbished because the décor was horrible and he could not believe he had made all his guests stay there over the years.

That night they slept beneath the heat-chimes for the first time, wriggling around on the fresh pallet for a while before it felt comfortable. But Thorin was exhausted after days of dozing and waking in sweats with his heart thrumming in his chest. Soon he fell heavily down into the darkness.

The dragon was in his dream again, curled around him. It cradled him on a bed of musty cloaks and blankets, moth-eaten, rotten things that matched Thorin's faded clothes. They were the clothes he had worn the day the mountain burned. The dragon cupped him in the crook of its folded wings, his body pillowed on its coiled tail like a doll held by a monstrous troll. Thorin could never know whether such dreams were fancies or memories; only Smaug knew all that had happened over the hundred and fifty lost years, and Smaug was dead.

In the dream Thorin slept, and yet watched himself sleeping as if he were floating above his body. He saw that his skin was grey with dust, or perhaps with ash, so thick that only a few strands of his black hair showed through the coating. He watched the dragon lower its snaked neck until its nose was only a few feet from Thorin's face, and then its lips parted and it blew a hot, searing breath out between its teeth. The ash floated away, slowly at first in faint clouds and then in great, billowing waves and flakes. Beneath it, Thorin saw at last that he was not a dwarf of pale skin and crimson blood, but solid gold, a gilded creature in which every pore and wrinkle was perfectly cast. His hair was made of the finest threads of braided, golden wires and even his eyelashes glinted yellow. Lower, Smaug's head dipped and into Thorin's ear he whispered some words that could not be written by any runes known to mortals, that hissed and rumbled like the belly of a volcano, and whose sounds Thorin could not repeat. But he knew what it meant, somehow, inside the echoing chambers of his head. _King, forever abiding._ And a music of tiny, patternless bells rung out across Smaug's scales, a metallic chittering like a swarm of copper birds startled from their roost—

Thorin awoke with his muscles shivering, He was still in Bilbo's bed in Bag End. He lay panting for breath, his ears straining in the darkness. Silence. The heat-chimes weren't ringing. There was no fire. There was no dragon, not even in his blood. He was a dwarf, old and harrowed, and not a king by any standards, but a dwarf all the same.

Beside him, his hobbit lay on his back, eyes closed, mouth open. Thorin watched Bilbo as he snorted in his sleep, rolled onto his side to face the door and tugged the blanket up over his shoulder. He reached out and brushed his knuckles across the tips of Bilbo's pillow-skewed hair. 

Slowly, slowly, Thorin drifted back to sleep.


End file.
